


Her Plastic Bracelet

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-17
Updated: 2006-04-17
Packaged: 2019-01-19 14:11:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12411831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: Not everyone can know every single thing about a person, just by watching them. But he can, and today, he understands her more than she’ll ever know.





	Her Plastic Bracelet

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

This idea went through so many changes, that it’s nothing like what I first imagined. Hopefully, those changes were for the better…(= 

Please do review with any suggestions, comments, etc. They make me smile

**Her Plastic Bracelet**   


He watches her, out of the corner of his eye, as his right hand doodles idly on the corner of his parchment. There she is, sitting up one row and a right from his, her long, tousled hair spilling onto her shoulder. Her cheek lies in her hand, and wrapped around her wrist is a fat, plastic bracelet, a lurid sparkly pink. 

It is an ugly bracelet; he sees her friend give it a raised-eyebrow and a small, exasperated shake of the head. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn if even _she_ thinks it’s ugly—he doubts anyone can see any sort of style or fashion in that fat pink bracelet.

It is one in the long series of fuzzy turtlenecks, purple silk pants and over-sized hair-clips. Lily Evans has a long record of wearing things that often elicited people to say things like, “Who on earth would wear something like _that_? _”_ It is an odd quirk of hers, one that at once both amuses and puzzles him. A quirk that he finds makes no sense, and yet, when put in the context of her, he thinks, “Well, of _course_ , Lily Evans is like that.”

But he knows why she wore the ugly bracelet and the shiny pants. It is to satisfy her own restless mind, her unquenchable exuberance, her perplexing idiosyncrasy. He can tell it is, just by looking at the way she listlessly twirls the quill in her hand.   


She is like a tangled ball of strings to him, self-assured, and neither desperate nor concerned with making sure she is approved. She flouts rules without a care or intention, simply by being Lily Evans

Perhaps, James muses, this quirk arose because—unlike a lot of girls—looking pretty and acceptable comes quite naturally to her, so instead, she gaily wafts above the regulations of social norm, wearing challenging clothes to compel people to think twice of the pretty redhead with terrible taste.

Or maybe, it’s simply to satisfy her impatient eccentricity. To say, “Yes, I am wearing this very un-sexy turtleneck no one would dare touch. Isn’t that funny?”

He imagines having her alone in his dorm, where he would touch the smooth plastic of her bracelet and chuckle softly. He would look in her eyes, and without speaking a word, he would tell her that he understood how very odd this little quirk of hers was. She would blush prettily, and he would step closer, the heat enveloping around them. He’d take her wrist and put it to his chest, where her pale fingers would gently rub his shirt. He’d pull her closer from the waist, and kiss her heatedly, until she was backed against a wall, where’d he say silently over and over and over again, _I know exactly what you’re like, Lily Evans._

And as James watches her, sitting there, a row up and a right from his, he amuses himself with the image of her when they were in second-year, a scrawny little redhead with robes hanging off her tiny body, with uncooked noodles for limbs. He could remember overhearing her friend tell her once that blue eye-shadow looked great with green eyes. And after that, little Lily had stumbled into the Great Hall one day, with blue eye-shadow dusting her eyelids, and he, James, wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, so he had pored an entire pitcher of water over her head.

It had seemed to him that she had worn the eye-shadow mostly to get someone to give her a second glance, to prove that Lily Evans did, in fact, have some _zing._

Now, with her pallid legs, and the freckles that are smattered across her face, it seems to him that she has gotten enough second glances, which even she has grown tired of. It seems to him she has found that _zing_ , and right now, as she sits a row up and a right from his, the _zing_ pretty much radiates off every inch of her skin.

(She didn't wear the blue eye-shadow anymore and rightly so, because he can barely remember to breathe when he looks at her naked eyes alone.)

Suddenly, he becomes aware of the chairs scraping the floor and a soft _thud_ beside him as Sirius, who had been resting the chair on its hind legs, lands back down. The bell is due to ring in a moment, and James dimly hears the sound of parchment rustling, bags zipping and people talking. He packs up his bag automatically, watching her, feeling like a Flesh-Eating Slug has crawled its way to his insides. 

The bell rings and he watches her hoist her bag over her shoulder, the bracelet sliding down her pale wrist. She begins to leave, and he feels every hope, every obsessive thought, and every extensive thing he knows about her fermenting inside of him, swelling up in his stomach, and rising forcefully to his throat, like a geyser. His heart clangs painfully as he sees the pink bracelet wound around her wrist, and he can’t, he can’t, he _can’t_ let her go like that—not when he understood every little thing about her, from her linty socks to her ugly bracelet to her laughing eyes. The geyser of thoughts and feelings rushes onwards, and he _has_ to let her know that he understands.

“Hey Evans!” He finds himself calling after her. “That’s the ugliest bracelet I’ve ever seen. Where’d you get it, the flea market?”

She gives him a derisive look and flicks him off. She speeds up her pace to catch up with her friends, leaving him with Sirius, Remus and Peter.

His heart tears, as his eyes follow her leave, and all the while he tells her silently, “ _I know exactly who you are, Lily Evans."_


End file.
